ABSTRACT
The growing global demand for palm oil is expected to double in less than a decade. The consequences of illegal land clearing and unsustainable sourcing by several palm oil industries are all too familiar – deforestation, forest fi res, gas emissions and a serious loss of endangered species in Southeast Asia. While laws exist to prohibit such burning and deforestation of land, they are poorly enforced and do not refl ect the reality of the economic drivers and the accompanying environmental risks. The willingness of key actors to address complex challenges by adopting a holistic environmental, social and governance perspective has led to successful collaborations across sectoral, institutional and organizational divides. Such multi-stakeholder collaboration in addressing context-specifi c issues underscores the need both to gain support and to take action on a range of related issues that contribute toward and may ultimately overcome complex challenges. However, it is also of much concern that, while several companies have taken steps to reduce their liability in the environmental sector, there is an absence of a serious human rights focus in policy. This chapter aims to underscore the importance of incentivizing businesses to embed human rights responsibly and will lay out wellcoordinated regional developments and approaches in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by businesses, governments and civil society that attempt to abide by key international standards governing business and human rights. This chapter will also recommend that governments should stop privatizing human rights and support a compliance-driven agenda and align national regulations to attract and incentivize companies to plan for sustainability, and that companies could back governance initiatives and target resource security.
